Death of a Nation
by Kspence92
Summary: A timeline of the events that took place before Jim woke up. See how the military and the government responded to the epidemic, and how a whole nation was wiped from existance in a mere 28 days.
1. Outbreak

**This isn't a story involving characterisation too any meaningful degree, but rather my views on how society, the government, military, police, media ect would have coped with the outbreak of "Rage".**

**I've been working on this timeline over at the Alternate History website too.**

**So here's my take on the 28 days before Jim woke up...**

At 8:38 PM, May 4th 2002, a group of animal rights activists broke into a research lab near Cambridge University, unleashing several chimps which are, unknown to the activists, infected with the highly contagious Rage virus.

Within seconds, all of the activists, and a scientist who had desperately tried to stop them releasing the caged animals, had become infected earlier.

They rampaged through the building, infecting and some cases killing researchers and security guards alike.

Police received their first 999 call from the lab at 8:45 PM, and the first units were on the scene seven minutes later. They arrived just as a dozen infected smashed through the front doors, and assaulted the police officers before they could flee, infecting them.

There were at least thirty infected in the immediate vicinity of the blood soaked research centre and they spread out in search of more victims.

Several car accidents occurred as infected ran across roads in pursuit of victims, forcing drivers to break or swerve.

A group of infected reached Cambridge's main train station twenty minutes later and stormed a waiting train, killing several people and infecting dozens of others.

999 calls from the public alerted police to what was thought to be a mass brawl between drunken students at the train station, and public order units were dispatched as were three ambulances.

Police clad in riot gear and armed with shields and batons charged the infected, who did not seem remotely intimidated, and seemed intent on attacking the officers. A few were successfully detained and restrained by police strapped on gurneys and taken to hospital by ambulance, once the officers saw they were vomiting blood and were clearly very sick.

Things took a turn for the worst when some of the officers were bitten, or got infected blood in the eyes and mouths. Those infected turned in between ten and twenty seconds, the longest known incubation in the outbreak period being thirty four seconds. Within a few minutes, several officers had turned and were fighting with their former colleagues.

The shocked and bewildered officers quickly got back in their vans and withdrew from the area, and formed a defensive line on nearby station road whilst waiting on reinforcements.

By 9:30 PM, BBC news was reporting a small scale riot occurring in Central Cambridge, completely oblivious to the true nature of events on the ground.

At 10:00 PM, armed response units were dispatched to the area surrounding Cambridge train station, as well as the Primate Research Centre, the two focus points of the outbreak. However, the virus continued to spread at rapid rates, with both police and public still, at that point, unaware of the biological nature of the violence.

By midnight, twenty police officers lay dead, with at least the same number infected. Gunshots rang out cross much of central Cambridge, and gangs of youths began looting in the town centre, believing the violence by the infected was some kind of riot by drunk students, and so decided to take advantage of the chaos.

The confusion grew, and several looters were shot in the town centre by police who had itchy trigger fingers after dealing with the infected.

The first infected reached the main shopping area at quarter past twelve, populated only with some students returning from nights out and police officers interviewing witnesses to the looting. Chaos broke out as the infection spread in the town centre, by rampaging infected storming into pubs and night clubs.

By two in the morning, the outbreak was more or less out of control, and hundreds of infected were prowling the streets, and dozens of people were dead. Terrified families were barricading themselves in their homes and huddling around TV sets, trying to find out what was happening.

The Prime Minister Tony Blair was woken at 2:35 AM and informed that a major public disturbance was occurring in Cambridge, and that fatalities had occurred. That was all anyone really knew at that point.


	2. Battle for East Anglia

By the time Blair got into the Cabinet room at 2.45 AM, most of the other cabinet members were just arriving, blearly eyed and tired, and confused.

The ministers tried to piece together what information they had. All they knew was :

. A major public disturbance was ongoing in Cambridge city centre.

. Twenty three police officers had been murdered, with double that number missing.

. At least fifty bodies of civilians had been recovered from the carnage at the research centre

.Several "rioters" had been detained by police and taken to Addenbrookes Hospital suffering from severe internal haemorrhaging caused by an unknown toxin or virus.

That was the only concrete information by that point, but updates continued to come into Downing Street during the night, growing worse and worse, with civilian deaths growing into the hundreds and a police station being overrun with rioters, and all the officers inside beaten to death.

At 6:30 AM, the Prime Minister phoned the Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire Police and authorised him to use whatever means necessary to quell the violence, including use of live ammunition and water cannons.

Half an hour later, contact was lost with Cambridgeshire police HQ, with sounds of gunfire, growls and screams being heard over police radios, followed by static.

BBC news began reporting stories of eye witnesses, who described being forced from their homes by "red eyed monsters", "lunatics", "evil b****rds" and such things.

By 9:00 AM 5 May, government officials met again, with scientists who had been working in Cambridge on the rage virus project, but had not been in Cambridge at the time of the outbreak, and began to piece together what was happening.

A worried Tony Blair held a press conference two hours later and declared that a state of emergency was in effect for all of Cambridge, as well as nearby Huntingdon, and that rioters would be prosecuted with the full force of the law. (he failed to mention the rioters were infected with a virus that causes homicidal aggression, largely to keep the public calm).

Police lines were continually being pushed back, and at least half of Cambridge's police forces was either dead, infected or had abandoned their posts to be with their families within 14 hours of the outbreak.

By the night of 5 May, the last remnants of Cambridge police were guarding Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge Airport and Homerton College, where they had set up protected safe zones for residents.

By the morning of the 6th, Addenbrookes Hospital was the last remaining safe zone in Cambridge. The infected finally broke through the barricades, and rampaged through the wards, killing and infecting all the defenceless patients who were bed bound, the infected beating and scratching them, or smashing life support machines and tipping patients from their beds. Feeble patients desperately tried to hobble away on crutches or escape in wheelchair, but it was no use. Remaining staff and policemen were brutally murdered as they tried to defend the patients, and within half an hour, four hundred people were dead in the hospital.

The infection had spread to the outskirts of Bedford and was approaching the towns of Newmarket and Royston, largely because the army had taken too long to mobilise, so quarantine procedures could not be put in place in time to prevent further spread.

At least 75,000 people were dead by the morning of 7 May, with 30,000 more estimated infected.

7 May was a normal day for most of the UK, with the obvious exception of Cambridge and neighbouring towns which had fallen to the infection.

Amateur videos uploaded to the internet quickly circulated, and it soon became clear to the public this was no ordinary riot. Videos showing, red eyes lunatics, some of them white, some black, Asian, male, female, tall, short, fat, skinny, young, old...the only thing these rioters had in common was that they all appeared to be severely ill, and have an extremely bad temper.

Protests broke out in London as the public demanded answers, with cities across the UK following suit.

At 3:00 PM 7 May, the Home Secretary and Health Secretary held a joint press conference in London, and told the public the truth, realising they could keep it under wraps no longer.

They announced that a highly contagious virus had broken out in Cambridge and that there many thousands of cases in the city, and that at least 6,000 people were dead (the actual death toll was closer to 80,000, but the public did not need to know that.).

Members of the public living in East Anglia, and in particular, Cambridgeshire, were advised to remain in their homes, to avoid unnecessary travel, and to avoid Cambridge at all costs.

The government began to call up some military reservists, and at least 2,500 active army personnel were dispatched from the army garrison at Colchester and set up defensive positions on the M11 to slow the spread of the virus as it moved southwards towards London.

Likewise, the army began setting up blockades on the southern outskirts of Peterbourgh, and also began to enforce a quarantine of Bedford, which was reporting a major outbreak of infection.

Within hours of the press conference, panic buying set in across the country, particularly south east England, as people stocked up on basic essentials.

Some airlines began to have some financial difficulties as customers cancelled tickets to southern England, even though most of the country was still safe.

Four days after the first cases of infection in Cambridge, cases were being reported in a dozen towns in East Anglia.

The first major engagement for the army occurred south of Peterbourgh on the afternoon of 8 May, as at least a hundred soldiers of the Royal Anglian Regiment opened fire on a large group of infected advancing from the south, in pursuit of refugees. Said refugees made it past the army blockade and into military protection, just as the soldiers opened fire on the infected. 50 infected were gunned down, but more kept coming, attracted by the sound of the gunfire, soon the soldiers fell back as the blockade was overrun and as darkness fell on 8 May, and the infection had inundated the south western part of Peterbourgh.

Witnesses in the city described the situation to BBC news via email : _"Those people, those "infected" or whatever they're called, they're in Longthorpe, and Westwood too now. The army was around but they've left us now. We heard gunfire for ages, and a couple of explosion to the east of here, but now its quiet. The situation here, is beyond belief. What is the government doing ? nobody is doing anything ! We heard those diseased people break into our neighbours house and do god knows what to them, and when we called 999, it was busy ! We are stuck here on our own, its not right."_

The FA (Football Association) met and agreed to postpone all matches until further notice due to the violence, and the fact that some football grounds were housing camps for displaced people.


	3. Chaos

Over the next three days, the virus spread like wildfire, overwhelming Milton Keynes, Peterbourgh and Bishops Stortford.

Within a week of the outbreak, 350,000 cases of Rage were estimated by the health protection agency nationwide. Much of East Anglia was overrun with the infected, and hurried evacuations were occuring in Essex, Befordshire and Hertfordshire as the infection spread to those counties.

Major roads were jammed as people tried to flee the spreading virus, forcing the government to commandeer public transportation due to the huge numbers requiring evacuation. In densly populated Hertfordshire, there was confusion and fear as public transport was shut down and taken over by the government to evacuate the area. Communications were garbled and confused with so much radio chatter, and people screaming into their radios and walkie talkies begging for help didnt help matters. Nobody knew what to do or where to go, it was just masses of people clambering for safety in everywhich direction. Fuel ran out in filling stations as the population of Hertfordshire tried to flee by car. Many who could not get fuel tried to sit it out in their homes, and wait for things to calm down. That was a mistake they would not live to regret as the virus continued its leathal spread through the Home Counties and towards the capital.

The first cases of infection were reported in Luton and Stavenge on 9 May and the government met in a panicked Cabinet session the same day with high ranking military officers to coordinate the defence of London. There were more than a few raised voices at the cabinet table that morning as ministers argued their point on how best to deal with the situation, some calling for quarantine and containment, others wanted mass evacuation and rescue operations, and the the Army and Air Force Chiefs of Staff wanted to throw everything the British Military had at the infected irrelevant of what the arguing ministers thought about potential political backlash against such a thing.

25,000 troops were deployed north of London, using the M25 as their main defensive line from where they intended to halt the spread of infection.

Troops surged forward and into Luton on the night on 9 May, finally authorised to use tanks, artillery and jets in urban areas. The result was a blood bath, as due to a breakdown in communications, the army was unaware that thousands of civilians were still trapped in the town, unable to escape due to blocked roads and infected prowling outside their homes, resulting in thousands of innocent men, women and children dying under a hail of cannon, rocket and machinegun fire as well as air strikes.

Thousands of infected also died, but many thousands more charged towards the soldiers, overwhelming their main forward operating base at Luton airport and forcing the surviving troops into a chaotic retreat towards the M25 defensive line.

News reports of the Luton Massacre and the military's rout soon broke, and the sense of dread in the country only worsened, with fringe religious groups calling it a sign of the coming apocalypse. Rumours of the horrendous military casualties during engagements with the infected in Luton and nearby towns spread amongst soldiers, many taking the decision to desert their posts and go home to their families. Several deserters were rounded up and executed by firing squad to be made an example of, but for the most part deserters got away unpunished, as the army did not have resources to spare looking for them.

However, London wasnt the only city now endangered by infection. Northampton was described as a "war zone" by one ITV reporter on the morning of 10 May, whilst the infected swarmed the streets of Ipswitch and Norwich the same day.

US President George W Bush phoned Tony Blair to pass his condolences for the loss of life and offered fincancial and humanitarian assistance to the UK.

Blair made a speech at 4:40 PM 10 May in front of 10 Downing Street, declaring that the government and the armed forces would gain control over the situation, and urged the public to remain calm and obey the authorites. In an apparant attempt at emulating Winston Churchill he said "We shall never surrender. We will stand united, and will fight this scourge until it is wiped from our nation. We will rebuild the broken homes, we will resettle the shattered neighbourhoods, and pray for those that died."

It was not Tony Blairs Winston Churchill moment, however, and there was no Dunkirk spirit in this "war" (apart from British refugees crossing the channel TO France and not the other way around).

Worse was too come for the British people. Much worse. 


	4. Epidemic

Eight days after three animals rights activists freed some chimps from a lab, the streets of England's towns and cities were running with blood.

The government declared the virus to have reached epidemic levels and authorised the use of deadly force by all police and military forces against anyone hampering the efforts of security services to maintain law and order.

Over a hundred looters were shot in Coventry by armed police on 11 May, as the virus approached the city. Soldiers shot at people protesting against fuel rationing in London the same day when they tried to approach Parliament, which was holding an emergency session. Eighteen people died and dozens were hospitalised.

Rolling blackouts were occuring in London, and in some areas the water supply began to fail.

Food and fuel hoarding became problematic, and prices for basic commodities soared sky high, forcing the government to impose a price freeze and a ban on bank withdrawals over 250 to keep the economy from collapsing entirely.

Conditions for thousands of refugee's from East Anglia and the home counties crowding the Millenium Dome as well as the massive tent cities in Hyde and Regeants Parks were becoming what the UN's refugee commitioner described as "inhuman and intolerable" as food and clean water ran low, and chemical toilets overflowed.

The government began to draft thousands of men into the army, oweing to the fact that the British Army was neither trained or equiped to deal with this sort of enemy, and was massively outnumbered. A new law was passed in a rushed Parliamentary session on 11 May allowing conscription of all able bodied males between 16 and 45 into the armed forces.

However, it would take several weeks of training for the conscripts to be of military standards, the question that the government needed to know was, would the training of the new soldiers be complete in time ?

Stories on the TV and radio did little to reassure the public that all was calm as the government was claiming, and rumours were aplenty. Rumours that Coventry was rife was infection and that infected had been sighted in High Wycombe just outside London, the later wasnt true, but rumours persisted, spreading panic faster than the virus.

In London itself, food riots broke out due to the unpopularity of the new food rationing scheme, resulting in supermarkets being ransacked and looted, and several looters being executed on the spot by armed police and soldiers.

Vigilante groups formed to protect neigbourhoods from mobs of looters as police presence began to dissipate as officers abandoned their posts to be with their families.

On 12 May, the day the infection reached London's northern borough's outskirts, thousands of Londoners rushed to Heathrow, Stansted and London City airports as mass panic set in as the public realised the epidemic was going to hit the capital.

At least 70,000 people fled from London via air and rail travel that day, and number that would rise dramatically over the next week. Fear and dread gave way to panic as the lethal virus spread without mercy towards millions of terrified Londoners hoping and praying that their great city would be spared. Their hopes and prayers would go unanswered.


	5. Streets of Rage

The dawn of 12 May saw the 10th day of the outbreak, with the infection about to hit the army blockades in north London, and outbreaks occuring in the midlands.

The infected ravaged the city of Leicester that very day, after making their way up the M1, killing and infecting drivers in the huge lanes of stalled traffic, one of the reasons it spread so fast, the infected infecting their way up and down the stalled lanes on the motorways between cities.

Pandemonium reigned in Leicester as council officals and local police and red cross workers desperatley tried to organise and evacuation for the unprepared city. Some got out, but in the chaos, thousands were left behind as the busses and trains fled the city, some people clinging onto the roofs of trains like something you would see in India. Over 30,000 people died that day in Leicester alone, and triple that number were infected.

Corby and Rugby fell in the hours that followed.

In Birmingham, Britains second largest city, the military was digging in for a fight, to give local police and officals time to evacuate the city of some 1 million people.

The first infected were reported on the outskirts of Birmingham on the afternoon of 12 May. They were quickly dealt with, but more kept coming and tried to break through the Army Blockades set up on the M6, M42 and M54 set up to prevent the virus entering the city.

The number of infected had grown significantly and although a large number of troops, police and armed civilians were defending the blockades vigourously, the government realised it was only a matter of time before they got through. The next day, the evacuation of Birmingham began. In all, close to a million people were to be evacuated.

It was obvious that the government could not save everyone, there was not enough time, but the troops were ordered to fight to the last man to give the evacuation effort as much time as possible. The troops followed their orders, and they never retreated, fighting the infection until they ran out of bullets, and even then, they charged the infected with beyonettes.

The M6 blockade was the first to fall, with the M54 and M42 falling a few hours later. 425,000 people had been evacuated by the time the infection got into the city. That still left more than 400,000 in Birmingham, awaiting evacuation. Those who were left behind but managed to survive to tell the story told of "the streets running with blood" as the infected rampaged through the evacuation centres where people were waiting for help, that would not come.

The RAF bombed the infected hoardes in the city centre, after the government finally relented to RAF command, killing many thousands, but by the next day, there were hundreds of thousands of infected in Birmingham, all of them spreading out of the city and into neighbouring towns, including Wolverhampton and Stafford. By this point, there were serious discussions in Cabinet about the use of Britains nuclear arsenal to destroy cities rife with infection, but the Prime Minister was extremely reluctant to do so, and ultimatley decided against it.

The number of displaced people in the UK was well over 6,000,000, and many more were soon going to become displaced. The British Red Cross, as well as other NGOs were totally overwhelmed and the camps established in the safer areas of Britain were full. Many people were turned away from these camps, and in desperation and frustration, they chose to seek shelter abroad.

On the 12 May, the first British refugees landed in France. The French government had anticipated this situation days earlier, and had built camps in Normandy and Brittany to house refugees, but these camps were quickly overwhealmed, and the French Government asked for United Nations assistance.

The U.N. began to construct giant refugee camps in northern France, and as the days went on, camps were being built in Ireland, Norway, Spain, Germany and Belgium to cope with the growing refugee crisis. In all, over 1,000,000 refugees had fled the United Kingdom. All major airports in England were inundated with tens of thousands of people demanding flights, many of whole were without a passport, cash or even a ticket.

The British Government demanded that all British Airlines allow refugees on board for free, regardless of them having a passport or ticket.

The British Airlines agreed, and even international airlines came to the aid of the British people and helped in the evacuations. By the night of 12 May, over 1,600,000 people had escaped the UK.

Tony Blair visited the troops manning the 18th blockade on the M25, who had been engaging the infected a few hours earlier, and thanked them for their hard work and bravery on behalf of the British people.

He returned to Downing Street and spoke on live television to the British people, and in particular the people of London, declaring that the fight against the infected must go on, and that the people must stand united against a common enemy.

It would be his last public address from Downing Street.

A large scale evacuation was ordered for the capital that night, with the majority of the evacuee's being directed to tents cities in southern England, particularly in Kent and in Cornwall, still far from the frontlines.

All public transportation in and around London was commandeered by the government over the next twelve hours. Cars, trucks, busses, trains, planes, helicopters, even bargers and Royal Navy patrol boats aided in the evacuation.

By the 14 May, ten days into infection, 75% of the population of London had been evacuated to the south. Thousands remained behind, some too stubborn, some too scared to leave. Others chose to commit suicide. An estimated 5,000 suicides occured in London between the 12th and 14th May.

Tony Blair and his cabinet remained in Downing Street working day and night, with only a few hours sleep.

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott resigned from the government on 14th May and left the country with his family to go to Australia. Home Secretary David Blunkett followed two hours after and left for Dublin.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw left for the coast the next day hoping to catch a ferry to France, without formally resigning, fearing that London would fall and he would be killed. His car was stopped by panicked citizens trying to flee the city who had not been able to get out after the evacuation vehicles did not return. He was mugged and his car stolen, according to an eye witness who later escaped to Spain. No trace of him was ever found after that, and it is generally agreed he died when the infected overrun the city only a few hours later, although one man claimed to have seen his body swinging from a lamp post with a noose around his neck, nobody will ever likely know what happened to him.

The government was in a state of near collapse, but Blair refused to leave London despite the insistance of his advisers, as did the Queen, who defiantly remained in her residence with the Royal Standard flying at half mast over Buckingham Palace in respect for those who had died.

The infected finally overrun the beleagured army on the M25 line at 4:00 PM 15th May, killing and infecting thousands of soldiers, those soldiers that were infected turning and spreading the virus behind the lines and finally into the city itself. Soon the growls and snarls and knashing of teeth could be heard drifting through deserted streets of north London.

Blair finally relented an hour later and was driven from Downing Street to nearby Horseguards where a helicopter awaited on the parade ground. He was airlifted from the city, along with what remained of his cabinet and taken north to York, where they established a temporary capital.

Blair would later recall in his best selling memoirs, "A Journey" released in 2005 : _"I felt a tremendous sense of guilt and shame as i boarded that helicopter, and looked back at the black door as i swung shut one last time. I felt as though i was abandoning not just our nations capital, but our nation itself. We managed to get a lot of people out of London in time, but not everyone, it was impossible, there were too many people and too little time, even with that accomplishment, i still can't forgive myself. When we flew over the gridlocked motorway, i remember watching the drivers bumping the cars in front of them, and people running and jumping from roof to roof on the cars to get away from the infected. All i could think was, im safe up here, and those poor people down there are left to die. I made my mind up to resign from my position as soon as the crisis had passed, how could i lead a country i had abandoned to red eyed, bloody monsters ? I pray every night asking for forgiveness, i doubt those prayers will ever be answered."_

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were flown from Buckingham Palace in an army chopper just as the infected began to break through the gates and overwhelm the royal guards, escaping with only seconds to spare, and taken to Windsor Castle just west of London, which had a military cordon protecting it and had been fortified.

Nealy 30,000 civilians and police died in London that day as the infected overcome the few remaining defences in the mostly abandoned former capital, most of the deaths occuring in a packed Paddington Station as desperate Londeners tried to get a train to Heathrow airport, the infection spread like wildfire amongst the tightly packed crowd of close to 20,000 terrified men, women, kids, infecting almost all those there in a matter of minutes.


	6. Great Fire of Manchester

As news broke that London had fallen, the next day a minutes silence was held accross the country in memory of those that died.

Meanwhile, the infection continued to spread northwards, generally in a northeasternly direction, with army blockades on the M1 being overrun with rampaging hordes of infected, leading to outbreaks of infection in Sheffield exactly two weeks after the first outbreak.

Scientists accross the country scrambled to develop a vaccine to the virus, with aid from scientists from the CDC and ECDC, but progress was painstakingly slow, and some of the labs overrun as the infection spread or as test subjects escaped their confines.

Attempts at evacuating Sheffield were haphazard and chaotic at best, with some evacuation centres not even opening and not enough busses or trains to get people out. Power failour's did not help matters either as people struggled to flee the city in the darkness. Rotherham, Stocksbridge and Barnsley fell the same night or early the next morning.

Army units began to disintegrate or desert their posts when they started running out of ammo and supplies, and morale seemingly collapsing as the virus spread uncontrollably, allowing the virus to spread almost unchecked by authorities in some areas.

Further west, the infection was spreading towards Manchester and Liverpool, and outbreaks were starting to occur in Wales also, but due to the smaller population of Wales compared to England's, the virus spead slower there, until it reached the capital Cardiff.

On 17 May, thirteen days into the outbreak, a large crowd of infected tried to break through the 35th blockade south east of Liverpool, and were beat back by troops from the 4th mechanised brigade, but once they began to run out of ammunition and supply lines began to collapse, the end came swiftly for the defenders of Liverpool.

The remants of the 4th mechanised retreated into the city centre, fighting the infected all the way, trying to buy time for the city's population to escape by ferry and plane over the Irish Sea to Ireland, or in some cases the Isle of Man.

The infected advanced eastwards from the ruined city of Liverpool in pursuit of retreating survivors from the army and refugees who couldnt make it out by sea. By 18 May, they had reached the outskirts of Manchester, which was arguably the most brutal engagement of the outbreak.

The infected rampaged through St Helens and Warrington, and rampaged along M602 motorway, killing motorists as they fled the city.

The main blockade on the M602 was defended by the 42nd(north west) brigade which was based out of nearby Preston, commanded by Major Henry West after the CO, Brigadier John Reynolds, and second in command Colonel Michael Patterson were killed.

The brigade, despite coming under near constant attack for several days, held out for a long time, even after the virus overrun Manchester.

Manchester was in a perilous position, as it was blocked off from the north and west by the infected, and everything to the south was a warzone. The city itself was suffering for what was bascially complete societal collapse. Running water had been shut off, power had completely failed in the area and sewage overflowed as rubbish piled up in the streets, as there was no fuel for refuse collection trucks. Hospitals were working by candlelight as backup generators began to fail, all schools, colleges and universities were closed indefinatley and Old Trafford Stadium had been turned into a refugee centre. The few police who had not deserted their posts struggled to cope with the increase in crime, as looters stole what they could from the few shops that remained open. Summary executions became common place for looters and rapists and food or fuel hoarders. Funeral pyres in back gardens became common place as disease spread with the collapse of sanitation, and mass graves were dug in public parks or bodies just dumped in churches and mosques, and in some cases childrens play parks, bowling greens and recycling centres. People holed up in their homes, afraid to venture outdoors as gangs patrolled the streets in search of someone to mug for food or other goods; money was no good now, and there were some cases of people using banknotes for burning to keep warm after gas supplies went down. The reports of cannibalism amongst the city's starving and desperate populace were never confirmed, but rumours persisted nontheless.

As the situation in the city became untennable, it became clear that evacuation was the only option. The evacuation of Manchester was to go northeast along the M62 into Bradford and Leeds and from there, towards Newcastle, where ferries were going to and fro everyday between England and Norway carrying refugees.

The infected broke into Manchester from the south and east on the night of 18 May, with elements of the 42nd Brigade, the 11th Light Brigade and survivors of Greater Manchester police, as well as some of the Royal Artillery holding the line. MLRS and howitzers pounded the infected in the city centre, as did appache gunships and RAF Tornado jets.

The Battle of Manchester ignited a massive firestorm that would sweep the city for weeks afterwards, the flames could not be tamed by the remnants of Manchester Fire and Rescue Service. The inferno forced what was left of the city's defences to flee towards the east coast of England. Thousands of people who had barricaded themselves in their homes commited suicide rather than burn to death or face the infected.

The government knew things were falling apart, and that the military was too overstretched to regain control, or even hold what remained of the country. It was time to cut and run, and save as many lives as possible. What remained of the British cabinet, operating from the now fortified city of York, began to discuss how to evacuate the entire surviving population of the UK to Europe. 


	7. Bloodbath in Yorkshire

Blackpool and Fleetwood evacuated with relative ease, with the area's intact police force managing to direct traffic northwards and into temporary camps in Cumbria or into Scotland.

The same cannot, unfortunatley, be said of Leeds and Bradford. The population of Bradford, some 270,000 people, had to evacuate to the north using the roads that go through Leeds first. The problem was, Leeds was trying to evacuate too. This resulted in horrendous traffic jams that in some cases would move no more than than a mile or two in an hour.

When the radio began reporting the infection was approaching Leeds, drivers panicked and began honking their horns or tried to bump the cars in front, not that either really made much difference.

When it became clear that the stalled lanes of traffic were not going to move, and that the infected would soon be rampaging up the motorway, drivers abandoned their cars with their families, grabbed their belongings and made a run for it.

Leeds fell shortly after Bradford, with the infected rampaging up the stalled lanes of traffic, infecting thousands of evacuee's as they tried to flee towards Scotland.

Realising the gravity of the threat facing York, Blair, his cabinet and senior commanders were airlifted to saftey during the night of 20 May, and taken to Edinburgh. The morale of defenders around the city began to collapse as rumours got out the government had relocated to Scotland. York itself fell on 21 May, the city collapsing into chaos and panic as the soldiers fled north.

By the early hours of the morning on 22 May, the infection continued to spread up along the traffic snarls along the A1, which lead to a bloody battle at the army garrison town of Catterick in North Yorkshire, which fell quickly due to most of the soldiers having been deployed elsewhere. The troops that survived withdraw northwest to the nearby market town of Richmond, and held a defensive position on the town bridge over the River Swale. The infected finally cought up, and rushed the bridge leading a bloody battle. The bridge was blown by C4 as the soldiers retreated, allowing a temporary reprieve. The remaining soldiers, a total of thirty two men led by a Captain Paul McDonald set up a command post in Richmond Castle, which they barricaded. They held out for a while before running out of food, and, with their command post surrounded by infected, chose to turn their guns on themselves rather ran starve or be beaten and torn to pieces.

Mere hours after Richmond fell, chaos reigned a few miles to the north east in unevacuated Darlington, which was still full of its population, as the government assumed the virus would have burned itself out as it spread northwards. Their assumption was wrong. The fact that all radio and TV stations in England had been overrun, and the remaining radio stations in Scotland being jammed by NATO to keep the illusion the world was infected to prevent more refugees leaving, did not help matters as the population of Darlington was completely unaware of what was headed their way.

At least 80,000 people died or were infected in Darlington that day, and the virus continued its unabated northwards spread towards Scotland. Newcastle soon fell to the Plague also, the last major city in England before the border. Several ships made it from Newcastles ferryport before the city was overrun, several thousand people escaping into the North Sea, many of them were evacuated up to Scotland, arriving in Ocean Terminal, Edinburgh, or in Aberdeen.


	8. Southern Front

By 21 May, the southern front was witnessing intense battles as what remained of the army did what they could to hold back the tide of infection.

Cornwall and Devon had a significant military presence, mostly troops that had been unable to evacuate to the north. Remaining police forces and hastily created civilian milita's manned barricades to slow down the spread of infection.

The clogged roads of the M5 led the infected all the way from Bristol right down to the south west of England.

Exeter was the scene of a massive conflageration as RAF jets based on the HMS Ark Royal aircraft carrier in the Irish Sea launched airraids on the city as it succumbed to infection, the inferno burning to death many hundreds, if not thousands of infected, and completely gutted the entire city.

This, unfortunately, only worsened the situation, as it drove the infected out of the city and even further towards the uninfected areas.

Dartmore National Park became a refuge for over 15,000 people from Southern England, as surviving army units and British Red Cross volunteers built a large tent city, miles away from any towns. Conditions in the camp were rather bad, with food supplies low and on ration, and sanitary conditions absolutley abhorent due the quarantine enforced on the UK ending food and other goods being imported to the UK.

Torquay fell to the infected without a shot being fired, as the entire army presence there had withdrawn hours earlier to a defensive line established between Plymouth and Bideford.

But the inevitable collapse came as the army began to run out of ammunition, no longer being resupplied by NATO or by the now abandoned arms depots and factories.

The Channel Massacre occured on 23 May as over 15,000 people tried to flee Plymouth by sea. There were a few ferries, some barges and tug boats. Fishing boats and even rubber dingies. Some people even tried to swim, most of those desperate poor souls drowned in the cold waters. The English Channel was clogged with refugee boats trying to cross to France, ignoring the quarantine, accepting that death by drowning or at the hands of a missile is preferable to being savaged by rabid lunatics.

In an event that would become as controvesial as the atomic bombings of Japan in World War 2, NATO air and naval forces, in this case, mostly from the French Navy and Air Force, but also several USAF jets, began activley bombing the Refugee Flotilla as it fled Plymouth.

The exact death toll is not known, but over 4,127 bodies were recovered, and 10,000 or so others who successfully crossed were placed in quarantine camps.

The Interior Minister of France resigned from his job in protest at what had happened, and the chief of the French air force resigned also, and commited suicide a few days later, wracked with guilt. Norway, Greece and Portugal withdraw their military personnel from the quarantine in protest also, declaring the attack on civilians "mass murder".

Many of the military personel involved in the Channel Massacre would need counciling for years afterwards, several would commit suicide, and one shot his commander in the head with his side arm when he returned to base, disgusted with what he had ordered him to do.

Plymouth fell that very day. One refugee who escaped recalled in an interview with Paris newspaper Le Monde.

"There were twelve of us on the boat. Me, my wife and two sons, and the captain and his family and a few others too. It was about eight at night, the sky was clear, only the moon and the lights of the boats illuminated the area. I took a look back at Plymouth, the power had been cut off for days by that point, but i could see the darkened buildings, and the orange glow over the city, illuminating the sky. Huge fires had broken out when the army tried to hold off the infected to give everybody time to escape. It was an eerie sight, watching Plymouth burn as we headed out to sea. I dont think anybody noticed i was crying as i looked back, i pretended the tears were just from the waves splashing over the boat. Rough sea that night you see, lots of swimmers drowned. We saw the lights in the distance, it was jets. We thought it was rescue coming. Then we saw those missile streak towards the sea. The screams...watching that cruise ship sink, after the missiles slammed into the side of it, it toppled on its side and sunk within maybe five, ten minutes at most. Hundreds, maybe a thousand people, jumped into the water. Most of them drowning, the other boats were too full to pick them up. We watched helplessly as the other boats near us exploded and sank, people screaming in the darkness. The jets eventually left, having run low on fuel or ammunition i assume, i know a few returned because they were refusing to follow their orders. They didnt come back, there was no way they could sink every boat before we reached the coast. When we arrived, we were pushed around and shoved into "quarantine camps", which i guess is the new way of saying concentration camp. It was horrendous, but the public outcry across France finally forced to the government to relent and release all the refugees. Now we're living in this UN run camp, much better than at Calais, but i yearn to return home one day, to see if there's anything left."  
>Interview of Paul Henderson at the Brest Refugee Camp , 23 July 2002.<p>

By 25 May, three weeks after the outbreak, all of south west England had been overrun, barring a few isolated villages, military bases and the Dartmore National Park Refugee Camp. 


	9. Scotland

The predictable spread of the virus had almost led to the remnants of the government becoming complacent when plotting where to defend and where they thought the virus would strike next. It was always known the virus would spread fastest in urban areas, and that rural areas would fare best. Thats why the sudden outbreak in Scotland took the government by surprise.

It wasnt massive hoards of infected rampaging across Hadrians Wall that would spread the virus into Scotland, but rather, a single crow that had been feating upon the corpse of an infected just north of Newcastle.

Rage did not affect birds, or any non humans/non primates for that matter, but they still acted as carriers in some cases.

The crow was flying over Glasgow, Scotland exactly three weeks to the day the outbreak first began when a 10 year old boy shot at it with a BB gun, to relieve the bordom from the cesession of TV and radio broadcasting in Scotland only days previous.

The birds body tumbled as it fell from the sky, and hit a middled aged woman in the face, in what was nothing more than a freak accident. But thats all it took, one drop of the crows blood entering her mouth.

It took a few seconds for the shock of the bird hitting her to settle in, and by the time that happened, a burning sensation was tearing through her body, contorting and twisting violently as she screamed and doubled over on the pavement much to the horror of bystanders, who knew exactly what was happening.

16 seconds later she had turned and mass panic had began on Oswalt Street in Glasgow city center as hundreds of people fled the scene, dozens dying the stampede that followed.

Glasgow's armed response units and public order police were on the scene in minutes, and were doing all they could to hold back the tide of infection, but the virus spread, as it had in ever other engagement the security forces had faced since day 1.

Twenty minutes later, Tony Blair and his cabinet were informed via telephone call that the infection had somehow broken out in Glasgow, and that hundreds of people had become casualties and that law and order was desintigrating rapidly as the population of Glasgow fled in terror.

Chaos reigned in the city of some 600,000 people. Nobody had expected the infection to hit Glasgow, and certainly not so soon. All major roads were jammed with cars, vans, trucks, busses, basically anything with wheels. The deathtoll was rising constantly by the minute as the infected rampaged accross Britain's third largest city, although by then the most populous place in country after London and Birmingham were abandoned. In the chaotic and rushed attempts at evacuating Glasgow, staff at hospitals and nursing homes were forced to make an extremely difficult choice. Abandon their patients that could not be moved, or mercy kill them. Dozens of patients in Glasgow's hospitals and nursing homes were overdosed on medicines that day to prevent them from horrendous deaths at the hands of the infected.

Within eight hours, Scottish regiments of the British army and police forces from other areas of Scotland had failed to contain the outbreak, and most of Glasgow was a bloodbath, with tens of thousands dead or infected.

On the night of 24 May, with Glasgow having entirely fallen to infection only hours earlier, and the infection rapidly spreading towards Edinburgh and Fife, the government convinced NATO to allow them to flee Scotland via a Royal Air Force helicopter, allowing the no fly zone a one hour lift. They left at 11:30 PM from Edinburgh, with all remaining members of the British Cabinet aboard. They landed in Belfast, Northern Ireland soon after, where they established a new capital from where to govern what remained of the country, which by then was not much. The remaining members of the Royal Family holding out in Balmoral Castle evacuated to Canada an hour or so later, a few chose live in Belfast and some went to Australia.

Although broadcasting had ceased, some newspapers continued to print, and a very few landlines remained operational in some areas. Word got around quick that the government had abandoned the country, and it became clear that all hope was lost for Great Britain.

The next day, the power grid in Scotland failed for one last time, and did not come back on, and water supplies in most of southern and central Scotland were failing also. Society was crumbling, piece by piece.

Outbreak Day 22 - Glasgow overrun Attachment 164119

Over the next few days, the breakdown in communications ruined any chance that the remaining military and police forces had in regaining control, or even holding onto what they had, facing both the increasing numbers of infected, as well as dwindling stocks of food, medical supplies and ammuntion, as well as accomodation for the thousands of refugees from England and southern and central Scotland.

The Forth Road and Rail Bridges over the River Forth were destroyed by retreating remnants of the Black Watch regiment as they withdrew from Edinburgh, as the city and its famous castle's defences crumbled. The decision to demolish the bridges bought a few hours, maybe a day, but the end still came for the Scottish nation as Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy and Dundee, and then Perth, Fort William and Aberdeen all were overwhelmed by the infected.

28 Days after the epidemic first began in Cambridge, mainland Britain lay in ruin, now nothing but a barren wasteland. Everwhere from Lands End in the far south of England to Inverness in the Scottish Highlands, were abondoned or just plain devastated.

Outbreak Day 28 - Almost all of Great Britain has been infected or abandoned, although some areas in the Scottish Highlands survived relatively intact due to their georgraphic isolation. At least 14,000 people survived in isolated towns and villages in the north.

As of 2 June 2002, four weeks after the outbreak, the United Kingdom of Great Britain effectively ceased to exist as a nationstate. With the exception of Northern Ireland and some islands around the mainland, the UK was no more.

After being coronated in Belfast on 3 June 2002, King Charles III, formerly Charles, Prince of Wales, made a heartfelt speech that was broadcast around the world and into refugee camps all over Europe housing British refugees. He appealed to the surviving citizens to stand united in grief, and in strength, and assured Britons and they would once again return home, once the scourge had been swept away. 


	10. Aftermath

An erie silence had fallen over the island of Britain, the chaos of the previous weeks had passed, now the only sound echoing through the empty streets of Britain's cities was the wind and barks of feral dogs.  
>London. A city that had existed in one form or another since the time of Julious Ceaser and the Roman Empire, was now nothing more than the worlds largest ghosttown.<p>The worlds population, which had been glued to radio and tv sets for weeks waiting to hear the latest updates from the UK epidemic, now only saw images from orbiting satalites of miles and miles of desolate landscape, abandoned towns and villages, burnt out cities and massive body dumps.<p>

87% of the population of the UK had been wiped out, either through becoming infected or dying at the hands of the infected, or dying as a result of the enormous wave of human panic that followed the infection.

Thousands of stay and feral dogs and cats, rats and birds and insects had flocked to Greater London to feast upon the stinking buffet of human remains that lay scattered throughout the city. Only 4 weeks earlier the city had been all hustle and bustle, now no more than 100 people, if that, out of more than 5 million, were left alive in the city, trying to survive as best they could.

28 days after that the first cases of rage occured in Cambridge, a young Irishman, Jim McDougal, awoke from an induced coma in St Thomas's Hospital just across the river from Parliament. Little known to him when he woke up, severely dehydrated, that some members of the hosptital staff had remained behind to feed him and keep his drip working. They were evacuated from the rooftop by a royal air force search and resuce helicopter the day after London fell, before leaving they bathed, fed and hydrated him one last time before locking the door behind them, to give him at least a small chance at survival.

Jim's story, along with that of Hannah and Selena, would become well known, and eventually made into a movie titled "28 Days Later". The movie would cause much controversy for being created so soon after the disaster,  
>but was generally well recieced by critics when it was released 3 years later.<p>

London stood desolate, its monuments towering over an empty city with no more tourists to look at them, just the dead and the dogs. To the north, the city of Manchester was a smouldering ruin, the fires having burned themselves out by the end of week 5 leaving behind a ruined necropolis with 85% of its buildings and infrastrucre destroyed or severely damaged.

Some communities in the north of England managed to cut themselves off due to the lower population and larger area between major towns and cities. Several villages would survive, some would become market towns and trade with neighbouring communities, other became strict police states under control of Chief Constables or Army officers and would wage war against other towns over resources and territory. This was after the infected died out and people could go back to fighting eachother. In Cumbria, north west England, a small scale civil war broke out between a group of villages which had banded together, protected by a motely group of civilian milita backed up by a handful of former police and army service personnel, and the remants of an army brigade which had deserted during the outbreak and subsequently survived by raiding communities or demanding weekly tributes from them. The Cumbria Conflict finally came to an end when the NATO resettlement operation began, as American and Canadian special forces began to go into mainland Britain and make contact with survivor communties. US Army Rangers supported the "Cumbrian Communities Alliance" against the more well armed remnants of the former 52 infantry brigade, and eventually defeated them and forced them to hand over their weapons.

The Channel Tunnel finally reopened 6 weeks after the outbreak, the tunnel had been a vital life line for refugees fleeing the chaos, but had been closed by French officals for fear the infection would come through it eventually.  
>Now it was being used to ferry NATO troops quickly into the South of England, setting up permiters around Folkstone and Dover, clearing out the bodies and decontaminating both towns, which would be intially used as bases for American, French, Canadian and German soldiers before being turned over to the remaing British authorities in Belfast when civilians in the European camps would begin resettling. As well as Dover and Folkstone, the Isle of Dogs area of Central London, as well as St Andrews and Fort William in Scotland, and Angelsey in Wales, had been chosen to begin repatriating British refugees.<p>

But the question many asked was...what if it comes back?  
> <p>


	11. Survivor 1: The Student

The motorway was jam packed with cars. With busses, vans, lorries. People had luggage tied to their roofs, some people were even sitting on roofs of trucks and busses, it was a surreal sight. People who had motorbikes zipped through the traffic fine, until they were dragged off and their bikes stolen. Me and my boyfriend of four years, Rick, we'd been stuck the traffic jam for hours. We'd barely made it out of Cambridge in time before the infected overrun the entire city. There we were stuck in traffic on the M11 trying to get to London, where it was still safe, at that point anyway. It had been three days since the riots started, the police were long gone. We'd heard rumours that the army had abandoned their posts in the city too, thats when the panic set in and everyone tried to leave.

The news on the radio had gone from bad, to downright horrendous :Thousands dead in Cambridge. Riots in Bedford. Soldiers barricading Peterbourgh. Tanks on the streets of Luton. It just didnt seem real. It was like a nightmare, only we couldnt wake up. Just that morning we had barely escaped with our lives as the infection reached our street, our neighbours chasing us as we made a run from the house to our car. We made it, obviously, and i remember crying hysterically as we sped at maybe 60mph down a 20mph zone, knocking a few of the infected down. Back then we didnt know what was wrong with them, i remember thinking it was some kind of new drug that students from the university had tried, and gone horribly wrong. It wasnt until the next day the government announced it was a virus.

There was sheer pandemonium on the M11 motorway that day when a police helicopter hovered overhead and told us through a loudspeaker to get out our cars and walk south, as the infection had reached the motorway. You had to be there to understand what i'm talking about. People crashing into the cars in front, some pushing people to the ground as they ran, leaving those poor souls to be crushed under the feet of the stampeding crowd. People were literally jumping from car to car in an attempt to get away, hopping from roof to roof, others fleeing into the nearby fields. And it only got worse when we looked back and saw smoke rising from a burning car maybe half a mile back, we knew the infected were getting close.

We ran as fast as we could, and sped up as the growls and screams came closer. I'm not entirely sure what Rick saw when he looked over his shoulder, but whatever it was, made him realise we couldnt keep running.

He opened the door of a car, a Ford Focus i remember, and shoved me in the back seat, and told me to lay down low and keep as quiet as possible. I tried begging him to get in, but he refused, he told me he loved me and slammed the door closed. He shouted at the infected, they must have been a lot closer than i had thought : "Come on you fuckers ! I'm over here, come and get me bitches !"

He ran off , towards the field i think, the infected chasing after him and running right past the car i was hiding in. He saved my life by doing that, i stayed ridged in that car for about six hours, silently crying. I managed to get out the car, and walked down the motorway towards London. Everyone was gone, darkness had fallen, the cars were all now abandoned, blood and bodies littering the road for as far as the eye could see.

I walked down the road towards London, i was more than grateful to be spotted by a passing army chopper and taken the refugee centre at the Millenium Dome in London.

To this day, i still dont know what happened to Rick, i've accepted now that he died. He died so i could live, and i know in my heart ill always love him.


	12. Survivor 2: The Kid

"Daddy, make the monsters go away. Daddy im scared !" Thats the last words i recall saying to my dad. All these years later, i still cant forget. A 7 year old girl shouldn't have to watch her own father go through that.

I hid under the bed, my dad had his back pressed against the bedroom door begging me to stay quiet and not to move. I could hear my mum and my brother pounding on the door, and my next door neighbour too. Screeching and shouting incoherent babbles. The door finally gave way and the three "monsters", once my mum, brother and neighbour lunged on him. He didn't turn, i know that his wounds were too serious that he bled out on my bedroom floor. I squeezed my eyes shut and covered my ears. I prayed to Santa - i know that sounds silly, but...i prayed he would come whiskey me away to the North Pole. I must have passed out from the shock, because when i woke up they were gone and my dads lifeless body lay on the floor, blood seeping onto the carpet as his empty, lifeless eyes stared at me.

I remember running, i ran as fast as i could, wearing only my pajamas and a pair of Nike trainers i got for my birthday. I ran for ages down the street. i tried other houses, but nobody would answer...i think everyone from our village had left by then. I didn't really understand what was going on when i heard my mum and dad arguing the night before about not wanting to evacuate. i didn't know what that meant, all i knew was that school had been cancelled because there were "bad people" going about, and i had to stay home, i couldn't go out to tried to keep it from me, i knew something was wrong though. id hear them talking at night or overhear the news sometimes, but i was too young to understand.

I did eventually bump into someone, and someone i knew, which really made me happy at the time. The janitor from my primary school, he said he didn't want to leave his home, so he invited me to his to stay with him. We took care of me, fed me, read me stories...then he would take longer tucking me in at night, or helping dry me coming out the bath. Things...they got bad, but what could i do? i couldn't leave, the infected "monsters" were out there, but that...that fucking pervert couldn't go on doing that to me.

I did, well, what a 7 year old girl shouldnt have to do. I knew it was too dangerous to leave, but i couldn't live with him anymore either. So i compromised with my self, i decided to stay in his house, just not with him.

I remember the knife, a big one, used for cutting chunks of meat. When he came into my room i had it hidden under my covers. He reached down to...to touch me...the last thing he saw was the pointed part of a knife heading at speed towards his left eye.

A few days later, my uncle happened to drive by, looking for my parents. i had no idea he was still alive. I was looking out the window at the time, covering my nose because the stench of that janitors body was overpowering.

I ran out that house and by sheer luck he saw me in the mirror and picked me up. He cried when i told him what happened to my mum and dad, so did it. He said he was going to take us to the airport at Blackpool, that planes were still leaving from there. We managed to get the last one it turned out. A lot of people in the line behind us didn't get on...a lot of fighting, people got hurt, some bad. Nobody bothered helping anybody. no ambulances came for the dead or injured from the airport riot. It was like it was everyone for themselves. Nobody gave a shit about anyone else anymore.

Like i said, no seven year old should have to witness and endure what i did.


	13. Survivor 3: The Prison Guard

Being a prison guard, obviously i was used to dealing with violent people, and trained for quite a few situations that could occur...but not what happened. Not that i blame the government, the didn't know what to do anymore than anyone else did. it was pure and utter chaos, there were no plans, no training. Not for such a crisis. Nobody thought it possible.

So when the infection reached the outskirts of Manchester, the order came through from the top : Evacuate. Over 1,000 prisoners were to be evacuated from HM Manchester Prison, Strangeways. What we had been ordered to do just wasn't practicle. We were severely low on manpower. A lot of guards were staying at home, or were headed for the airport by then. We were down to 45% staff.  
>On top of that the government didn't give us instructions on how to move the prisoners. All the chaos and confusion, a lot of orderers didnt get passed along. Most busses and train's were evacuating civilians. Why save these crimials instead? That was what a lot of us asked.<p>

344 prisoners. That's how many we were able to send away with the army when they arrived. The rest...well, the Commanding Officer of the troops that arrived helped us "deal" with the prisoners we couldn't evacuate. There was no room on the transports for the other 700 or so inmates. Obviously we couldnt just let them free, but neither could we leave them locked up to starve to death in their cells.

The prisoners were all assembled in the courtyard. 712 men in total. Four heavy machinesguns were in place, as were 30 soldiers armed with assault rifles and hand grenades. By the time the prisoners realised what was about to happen it was too late, the bullets started to crackle. For 10 minutes the gunfire continued, the few who survived summarily executed with a single shot to the head.

712 prisoners were lined up, and 712 prisoners were killed. Ive never seen so much blood in my life. That officer, i forget his name, a Major West i believe. He looked thoughly horrified at what he had ordered his men to do after seeing the aftermath first hand.

I quit my job that day, its not like i had any prisoners to guard anymore. A lot of guards at the prison were rounded up and conscripted into the local militia the army was training. I ducked out and drove home to my wife and son. I broke down as i told her what happened in the prison. BBC news reported what happened as a "prison riot" that was put down with "lethal force". No shit it was lethal. I dont know if anybody at the BBC ever did buy the governments line. Not that it matters, the prisoners would most likely have died anyway, regardless of if we let them go or left them locked up. We drove out of the city that very night, i remember looking in the rear view mirror and seeing explosions lighting up the darkness a few miles back as planes flew low overhead. We got out just in time.


	14. Survivor 4: The Secretary

We felt safe in London. Everyone did, back in the first few days. The army would soon restore order, that's what the official line was anyway. That confidence soon began to fade, especially as the "infection", as the government now called the rioters, had broken out of Cambridge and was headed towards London. They told us not to panic, that the army was going to protect the city to the last man and bullet That they did, they held their ground. But it wasn't enough, soon those freaks had broken through the lines and were in the city. You couldn't imagine the panic, the fear. You had to be there to know what I mean. The worst in people came out. Fear makes people do terrible things…

My mother stayed with me, I had been her carer since my dad passed away a year earlier from cancer. She'd brought me up and looked after me since I was a little girl, I was now 41 and it was time to repay the favour. She was 94 years old and bed bound. I called the evacuation station that was operating at Kings Cross. Nobody answered. That was our nearest evacuation point. I tried three other nearby evac stations, the local bus station, the church and the high school .Nobody would pick up. I turned on the radio, the government was broadcasting updates constantly. All our nearest evacuation centres were no longer operating due to lack of staff. They'd all buggered off.

An hour later there was another announcement, RAF helicopters would be landing in Hyde Park in one hour to evacuate anyone stranded. I thought "finally I can get me and my mum out of here". Then I heard the bad news. They were only taking people "who could contribute to the survival of the nation". Was this what our country had sunk to? To such draconian measures?

I looked over at my mother, snoozing peacefully with her blanket over her. I didn't know what to do. The government wasn't going to help evacuate her, and my car had been broken into my looters and trashed the week before, so I couldn't drive her out of the city. Even if I had a working car, the exit roads were all horrendously grid locked according to the radio, and drivers were being killed in their cars by the infected.

I couldn't ask my husband to help us. He was stranded in Saudi Arabia on a businesses contract, and he couldn't get any flights back. I was on my own. I knew deep down, if I stayed, I would die. I couldn't stay in London, the city was being overrun with those…fucking monsters. I didn't want to die, and certainly not like that, not the way I had seen people on the TV savagely torn apart.

But I couldn't just leave my old mum all alone? She would die. I couldn't live with myself. The news reports were getting grimmer by the minute. Another borough overrun, another safe zone breached. London's defences were collapsing. I had to get a move on if I was going to leave. So I had to make a choice, stay with my mother, and die together. Or make a run for it, and maybe make it out alive. The fact im here to tell the story clearly tells which choice I made.

It's a decision that I don't regret, but one that haunts me every night I close my eyes. Now I think about it, im sure she would appreciate having died peacefully in her own bed with a glass of wine (loaded with painkillers, which she didn't know about), rather than spending her last months or years in some squalid refugee camp in France or Ireland or wherever. She didn't know I was overdosing her when she drank the wine. She died peacefully and dignified soon after, holding my hand.

Did I do the right thing? Well that's a question open to debate. I know for a fact my story is hardly unique. It happened in hospitals, nursing homes and private residences up and down the country. I did what I had to, as much as it killed me inside. I hate myself for what I did, but I made a decision. One that haunts me, but ultimately I made the most humane and rational decision I could in such circumstances.

I covered her with her blanked, said a prayer, and made my way to the evacuation point at the park. After getting on the helicopter, I remember watching the infected rampaging down my street as flew over it, breaking into peoples homes. That would have been me and my mums fate had I chose to stay behind with her.

I made a choice. I chose to live.


	15. Survivor 5: The Policeman

There was a tank outside the police station. Three floors down. A big fucker of a tank too, a Challenger 2 I think. The machine gun on top was rattling away like mad, and the sound of the cannon when it went off was almost deafening, and made me jump every time. I hadn't slept in two days, we had all been called to the station. All officers were on duty, even though I was technically due a holiday.

I'd never seen a tank up close before. I mean, how often do you see tanks on the streets of Luton? I'd been a police officer for 15 years and never in my whole time did I see tanks deployed in cities. And there was one parked right outside my work place. We were mainly focusing on evacuating civilians, or dealing with petty crimes. For the most part however, the army had been placed in charge of maintaining law and order. Id seen a group of 20 people lined up against a wall and shot for theft. What could I do? Arrest them? I stood there and said nothing. I knew some of those people too. They weren't bad, just desperate for food and medicine for Christ sake.

When the infected started to get closer, the public panicked. A lot of people tried to evacuate., but the roads were jammed. A lot of Muslim youths began to demonstrate in the town centre, accusing us of favouring white's over them during evacuation procedures. Nobody was killed in the race riots that night, but a lot of people were injured. The tear gas cleared the streets sharpish, as did the arrival of tanks. Tanks that would have been better suited up north rather than dealing with such bullshit.

I was just glad to get back to the station that night and phone my girlfriend. She was safe up in Newcastle, as she had been at a hen party when all the shit kicked off. When I hung up, I heard a sound like the world was ending. A thunderous roar screaming through the air, then two massive explosions that shook the building. I remember thinking "What the fuck was that?" . A minute or so later I heard more explosions, not as loud more like loud thuds. Another officer, and guy that used to be in the army, told me it sounded like mortars. Then ever louder bangs, he said it sounded like the army was shelling Luton with heavy artillery. The Battle of Luton had begun.

I looked out the window and saw lights in the sky, the RAF was bombing the town ! Planes were actually doing bombing runs in the streets of Luton ! I remember thinking how bloody insane that sounded. That didn't happen in Britain. Planes didn't drop bombs in the streets, and certainly not our own planes for sure. Further north I could hear the crackle of automatic gunfire as assault rifles and machineguns went off in the night. Screams started to fill the air, more explosions, more gunshots. I could hear the whoop whoop whoop of overhead helicopters. We were in the middle of a bloody war zone !

We only later found out that somebody had fucked up somewhere along the military chain of command and told them that Luton had been cleared of civilians. It most certainly had not ! There were thousands of people trapped in their homes. Homes that were being demolished by artillery and jets. The infected were storming the city from the north as the army stormed the south and bombed the shit out of everything. The building across the road was hit by a shell, shattering the windows in the police station. We all left the building, I don't know if anything bothered letting those rioters from earlier out of their cells. If they didn't then they will be nothing but bones now, unless one of the shells managed to knock a wall down, but I don't know.

Me and a few of the guys grabbed a van and drove through the streets looking for the local commander to get him to call of the attack. We couldn't find him, nobody knew where he was. Nobody knew who was in overall command in the area. Communications were breaking down, it was chaotic.

We finally gave up when we seen the infected rampaging over machinegun posts and climbing over tanks in the town centre. We drove the outskirts and then walked when the roads got too jammed, all the way into London.

I don't know how many people died in the battle, but I know a lot more could have been saved, if proper resources had been allocated and somebody bothered to find out if the town was cleared or not.

Turns out the guy who gave the attack order shot himself the next day, wracked with guilt. I don't pity that wanker. Not In the least.


	16. Survivor 6: The Doctor

It had been four days since the outbreak in Cambridge, and things had gone from bad to worse. I worked in Peterbourgh's City Hospital. The infection had reached the city outskirts, and as anybody who escaped the city could tell you, it was pure panic. As people tried to evacuate from the city, cars crashed, people fought amongst themselves. Some fires started as people hurled molotov cocktails at the infected. Needless to say, many people were hurt, and the hospital was stretched almost to capacity.

Many of us refused to leave the hospital. We had a job to do, and many of the patients simply couldn't be moved. The Army was supposed to evacuate those who were able to move, as well as staff who wished to leave. I don't know what happened, but no soldiers ever turned up. We were abandoned.

When it became clear the city would be overrun with the infected, we took a decision, along with several police officers who had taken shelter at the hospital, to barricade the entrance and keep the infected out until help could arrive.

Those who stayed behind to protect the patients, noble as it was, would ultimately pay for their kindness with their lives. I had just come from surgery at the time, removing a bullet from a man who had been shot by police whilst looting a supermarket. We heard the alarms go off. We rushed to defend the patients cramming the wards and in some cases makeshift beds on the floor. The infected had broken through the front entrances and overwhelmed the security guards and handful of armed policemen. A few of the staff loaded some of the patients onto stretchers and wheelchairs and tried to wheel them to safety in other parts of the hospital, but i was a vain effort that would ultimately postpone the inevitable by only a few more minutes, if that.

I remember watching the infected tearing into this old lady, a cancer patient i recall, as she lay in her bed, and her son and his wife trying to drag the infected off her. She got off the bed and then infected her son and daughter in law. It was heartbreaking to witness. It was the same everywhere, the infected throwing patients from their beds and beating them to death, or infecting them. One patient had his head smashed against his own life support machine. One old lady, suffering from dementia was grabbed out her wheelchair and thrown down the stairs before being beaten to death by an infected patient with a crutch. It was...it was fucked up.

I ran. People try to tell me i didn't do anything wrong in running away, that i would've died if i hadn't. But i still feel guilt. I fled in terror as those defenseless patients, my patients, were killed. My colleagues, my friends...died, and i ran away to save myself. I hid in a store cupboard for two days until finally braving making a run for it. Eventually i was picked up by a group of survivors the next day, and we made it to a boat and got to France. I'm a coward. Thats what i am. I hid and cried in a cupboard as the others fought the infected till the end.


	17. Survivor 7: The Teenager

I was only 14, but i was old enough to understand when a situation was fucked. And this was one of those times. The roads out of the city were jammed. Driving out was just impossible and besides, we couldnt afford the fuel prices, they had gone through the roof since the outbreak ! It had been 12 days since the first cases in Cambridge, and the government had decided to evacuate London, with the infection approaching the city, we had to get out. My dad had our tickets and flights booked.

The quickest route to the airport was through Paddington train station. Me, my Mum and Dad and my older brother Mark walked to the train station. Thousands of people had the same idea, abandoning the idea of driving out of London. Trains had been going back and forth all day, full to the brim with refugees headed to the airport or the ferryports on the south coast. People were almost squashed shoulder to shoulder, it was difficult to move in such a huge crowd, 20,000 maybe even 30,000 people in all i think.

We'd heard on the radio just before we got you got to the station that there had been an outbreak of infection in Wembly, not too far from where we were. A lot of people were scared, you could see it in the faces. Most of the police there at the train station were armed, some of the soldiers backing them up worse respirators on their faces. Everyone knew it was only a matter of time before London was overrun. It was a race to get out before the city fell.

Ill never forget the scene of the last train pulling out of the station, people standing on the roof, or clinging onto the windows, the people on the roof pulling them up. Then the screams came from further back in the crowd, a deathly silence fell for a second, then the panic set in as we all realized that somewhere in the crowd there were infected.

I got separated from my parents and Mark in the stampede that followed, but i managed to hide in a ticket booth and keep my head down. I never saw my family again after that, I caught a grimpse of Mark, he was on top of this kiosk, safe enough from the infected for the moment. By the time i got the courage to brave another look, the chaos and screams and shouting had died dow, it was just an eerie silence that had fallen over the thousands of corpses carpeting the floor. Mark was gone from that kiosk, i dont know where he went. I never did see him or my parents again, but i know they're dead now. I read the memoirs of Selena, that woman who escaped those nut job soldiers in Manchester, she had met my brother, Mark, then killed him after he was infected a couple of weeks later. At least i know what happened to my brother, i can take some comfort in that, theres some closure there i guess.


	18. Survivor 8: The Reporter

I was somewhat grumpy at receiving a phone call at 3 in the morning. It was my boss however so I had to be civil. He sounded fairly alarmed, and asked me to come into the office as soon as possible as something big was going down in Cambridge. Sure enough I drove to the office, got briefed on what was said to be a major civil disturbance in the town centre involving hundreds of rioters, and that people had been killed. Me and my crew got in the van and drove up to Cambridge from London to do a live report from the area.

Heading right into the thick of it might sound a bit stupid, but bear in mind this was the very first night. Nobody knew what was going on, we didn't know about any infection then. All we knew was that there was a riot.

We set up behind a defensive line of riot police, glad in protective gear and shields. It was dark, the flashing lights of police vans and ambulances illuminated the houses nearby. I remember hearing the commotion down the street as the equipment was set up. It didn't sound like previous riots I had covered before. I didn't hear "fuck the police" or "The workers united will never be defeated", no , what I heard was…animals. Or what sounded like animals. I could hear growling, snarling, roaring. Policemen were going door to door telling people to evacuate, many in their pyjamas, cramming them into vans and driving them off.

Just before we were due to go live, another van pulled up. It was marked with "Health Protection Agency". That obviously aroused my suspicions. Were these people sick? We went live just as armed men in white biohazard suits exited the van. Id been told the news desk was about to switch over to me.

I quickly fixed my hair as we went on "The situation here in Cambridge is being called "_fluid_" by the Chief Inspector of Cambridgeshire Constabulary. Officers have refused to comment when asked what is going on, but one officer who did not want to be identified said "_We can't tell you what's going on because nobody knows. The whole situation is a mess." _"As you can see behind me, a large group of public order officers have formed a defensive line along the street to allow time for families to be evacuated."

Trevor in the newsroom asked me_ "Do we know if there are any casualties at this stage? And does anybody have any idea or speculation on the cause of this crisis?"_

"Police and health officials have confirmed that 19 bodies have been recovered so far, but conceded there may be more in other area's of the city yet to be found. Unofficial sources say that there may be over a hundred dead, and bodies have been taken away from the University and the train station by the van load."

Before I could continue, the police line began to fall back. Gradually and calmly at first, then suddenly became a chaotic route. More rioters were joining the scene. Then I saw what had frightened the officers so much. Several of the rioters were wearing police uniforms and fighting their colleagues !

"Trevor, it looks like the police are fighting each other here, I don't understand quite what's…" at that point several of the infected broke through the line and ran directly at us. I dropped the mike, the camera fell to the ground and we all got in the van and drove like hell, a few policemen managed to get in the van too, it was the nearest vehicle to them.

We sped down the road and arrived at a police station a little while later where we took refuge and did a few interviews. Three hours later we saw armed police from other constabularies arriving. We were told to leave Cambridge at once for our own safety. We were "escorted" from the city along with other reporters. It seemed the government didn't want information about whatever was going on leaking out. It didn't really matter anyway, since when Cambridge was overrun entirely the next day and the infection spread out in all directions they held a press conference and admitted there was an outbreak of an "unknown" virus. How unknown it was to the government remains to be seen.

I did a few live reports after Cambridge. Some in London, one in Peterborough, the last one was in Liverpool. I managed to get on a ferry to Ireland from there. The port swarmed with infected as we left. Thousands of stranded people were torn to bloody pieces. Many jumped in the water and tried to swim, a lot of them drowned. I couldn't look. I tried not to listen to the screams of those poor souls left behind. I covered my ears so I wouldn't hear. But in my dreams, covering my ears doesn't work. I still hear them crying out, begging the ship to come back.


	19. Survivor 9: The Scotsman

I was a student at St Andrews University in Scotland when the outbreak happened. I remember that night when i saw it on the news, about the riots in Cambridge down in England, i didnt really think about it much, after all, it was probably just some drunken students or some anti tuition fee's protest.

It wasnt until i woke the next morning for work that the news was reporting that people had died. But still, it was hundreds of miles away, what did i have to worry about ?

Then as the days passed, people started to worry about this new infection. Dont get me wrong, i was worried too, but i didnt think that it would reach Scotland, i genuinely thought it would be contained. Most people did in the first days, we didnt know enough about it to know any better. Nobody did.

Every day the news on the TV grew worse and worse. Another city fallen, another blockade overrun, another government official resigning or fleeing with his family. Me and a few friends were having a drink at mine, and all we ended up doing was watching the news the whole night. The massive traffics jams as people streamed out of London, the huge fires in Manchester and Plymouth...

Prices shot sky high, even for basics like bread, butter and milk. Fuel prices were extortionate, and from the second week onwards we started to receive frequent power outages, sometimes for hours at a time.

Classes were eventually cancelled, and the campus turned into a refugee centre. I got a train to Dundee, where my family lived, just across the River Tay. Public transport had become a nightmare, nobody cleaned the trains anymore, some ticket inspectors were insulted, some even assaulted.

By the time i got to Dundee, the city was a mess. You see, most of England was gone by this point, and there was fear that Scotland would soon be hit next. Law and order was slowly but surely breaking down. Black bags of rubbish lined the streets, and bins stood unemptied, with not enough fuel for waste disposal, as the remaining fuel was being used by emergency services and the armed forces, with strict fuel rationing in effect. Some cars that had broken down or had run out of fuel were abandoned in the middle of the street, others had been stripped or burnt out. There were occasional gunshots from the Douglas and Broughtyferry areas of the city, as police executed looters. At night the city was illuminated by fires of arsonists, or of funeral pyres of people who had died of diseases that were long thought gone in Britain. It was...almost medieval looking.

When news broke that the infection hit Glasgow, things in Dundee fell apart. The police left their posts to protect their families, the army pulled out from the city, and headed north towards Aberdeen, or, according to some rumours, to retake the North Sea oil rigs that had been occupied by the Norwegian military. No war ever broke out between the remnants of the British forces and Norway, so its probably safe to say that was just another bullshit rumour.

After the power was cut, and the radio stopped broadcasting, i decided it was time to get out. I bribed a fisherman with a thousand euro's i had saved for my then upcoming holiday to Amsterdam, obviously by then cancelled. He took me, my mum and dad and my little brother right round Scotland and into Dublin harbour. I never did see any infected first hand, something i am glad of, but i did see my own city destroy itself from the inside out, before the infected even arrived.


	20. Eddie's Diary

_**I know i've not updated for a while, so apologies for that as i lost my password and have been busy for work. I did submit another 28DL fic under another username which is called "State of Emergency", which follows the gradual collapse of the British government.**_

**13 May 2002 **

"I cant believe i'm keeping a i diary, i always thought it was something girls did, but mum says i should record everything, so people in years to come will know what it was like. I think Mum is being silly, she just laughed when i said we can show them videos on the TV or internet. But it wasn't a funny laugh, it sort of freaked me out, like maybe she thought we wont have TV or internet much longer.

Its been about a week or so since it first started. We thought it was just silly people fighting at first. Maybe some people got too drunk or something, but then the policemen and the doctors and teachers and little kids too all started to join in the fighting. Mum said at first we would be fine as its way down in England miles away and we are safe here up in Scotland. But i saw the telly last night showing a map of Britain with all these red dots glowing, and they were growing all the time. It was meant to show the spread of this infection thing thats making people go and fight. Mum explained its like a germ, but it dosnt pass through coughs but through your blood or spit and once you get it you become one. It reminds me of this vampire film i saw once at a sleepover. I hope mum doesn't read this and find out i saw that film ! sorry mum.

Anyway diary, Mum says its bedtime because i have school tomorrow. But who knows, maybe not for much longer. My friend said earlier that maybe the teachers or whoever owns the schools are going to close them till this is all over. Fingers crossed. and toes."

**14 May**

"Just home from school. We didnt really do all that much work. The teachers spent a lot of the day in the staff room watching the news rather than teaching us anything and they let us play for most of the day which was great ! We had an assembly where the Head teacher told us that school was going to be closed for at least a month ! Can you imagine a whole month out of school ? Its like an extra summer holiday ! I think theyre scared of the crazy people fighting in London and Manchester and where ever else. I cant believe Old Trafford is gone ! the stadium burnt down the news said this morning. I feel sad for Man United.

I dont get why theyre so worried, its like hundreds or maybe even thousands of miles away. Its not like it will come here. Mum says we are safe here and that the army is making things safer for the people in England so that the crazy people wont come here, but she had that same look in her eyes when she said that as she did when i asked her if Santa was real and she lied and said yes. Ive known for ages Santa isnt real im 11 ! almost a teenager but i dont have the heart to tell my mum.

I'm going out to play with Dylan from down the street now, but i might write in this later on if i can think of anything interesting."

**15 May**

"No school today, isnt that great ? Well it was until CBBC stopped showing cartoons and the news came on every channel on the telly. The news usually bores me but this was different. It wasnt something to do with a foreign country or a boring politician. This was scary. Those infected crazy people are all over London now. Soldiers and policemen are putting all the normal people in buses and trains and trying to drive them to someplace safe. Mum says a lot of people from London are going to France. Why would they all go on holiday at once ? Is it because theyre scared of the infected ?

Mum looked different i noticed. She didnt speak much as we watched the scary people with the evil red eyes fighting the army in London. I saw soldiers near Big Ben shooting at people. It was like a film, but i know it was real. I know why mum looked different. She was scared. Mum never gets scared. She never answered when i asked her if it this would all stop soon and go back to normal. Maybe i want to go back to school. I miss things being normal. I want to see my friends and have cartoons to watch. and now i cant get sweeties as much from the shop because all the prices are going up and mum cant afford it. Makes me sad. Anyway dear diary, i may be back tomorrow to write more. I dont have much else to do now."

**16 May**

"I woke up to the sound of sirens this morning. Looked out the window and saw two police cars speeding down the road. How come they get to speed but they arrest other people who speed ? Anyway thats not important. Mum is making me stay at home now. She phoned up Dylans mum from down the street earlier and he isnt allowed out to play either. I dont get it. Its not fair, its not like the infected are even near here ! She said to me that there are bad people going about and that all children need to stay at home with their parents. She has even stopped going to work now so she can stay home and take care of me. I wish Dad was still here. I wish he hadnt joined the army. Mum dosnt know where he is and he wont answer his phone. The last time we spoke to him he and all his friends were collecting their cool guns and going into England to shoot the infected.

Oh one last thing diary. I miss my teacher Mrs Fletcher. I always said to my friends i hated her and that shes a B.I.T.C.H. but now i just miss her. I miss going out. i miss cartoons on the tv. why is this happening ? Is it all a dream ?  
><strong><br>19 May**  
>"Sorry diary, havnt bothered writing in a few days, just been glued to the TV with my mum. She didnt like me watching the horrible things on the news at first, but im used to it now. You will never guess what happened this morning - The Queen died ! She had a heart attack and now Charles gets to be King i think. Things must be getting bad. The Prime Minister just came on the telly and said that all the big cities are to be evacuated, mum says that means to get all the people out and to someplace safe."<p>

**20 May**  
>"Tony Blair is now living in Edinburgh ! Imagine a big important person like him just a few miles away across the Forth Bridge ! He landed last night in a helicopter they said on the TV. How cool would that be to go in a helicopter?<p>

I wonder how my dad is getting on. I bet he got to fly in a helicopter. We watch the news every night and see loads of soldiers going about, but never my dad. Mum says he will be fine, i hope so. All we know is that he was going down towards Manchester, but he wasnt really support to tell us that, its a secret. I dont know why its not like the infected will set a trap or anything.

Something weird happened earlier. The lights went off. All the power went down. I thought maybe mum hadnt paid the bill again, but it wasnt that. When i looked outside the whole street was dark. The lights were off in the Kingsgate shopping centre and the High Street was pitch black. The electric came back on a few hours later thank god ! i was so bored with no tv to watch. Mum has just come back from he shop with loads of candles and batteries and other stuff. More than she had money for. Money has been tight since all this started. I heard more sirens outside and windows breaking on the High Street. I think people were stealing things from the shops. Did my mum steal ? Shes not a thief. Is she ?"  
><strong><br>21 May**  
>"Well the news says we are quarantined. Isnt that what happens to your dog when you go to another country ? I dont know but anyway it doesn't sound good. There's fighting everywhere now. Liverpool, Blackpool, Newcastle, Cardiff and lots of other towns. I'm worried that soon it will happen here. People are scared. They dont buy stuff anymore they just take it from the shops. Nobody is working in the shops now. Nobody is driving the buses or the bin lorries or delivering the post. There are bags of rubbish all over the place now because the bins haven't been emptied in like forever. It smells gross !"<p>

**22 May**  
>"The power went down about six hours ago, or was it four ? i dont know. Its not too bad right now because its still daylight. Mum says not to hold my breath about it coming back on. But it has too, right ? We cant live without electricity that's just insane ! I miss watching the news and looking for dad. Now im just looking out the window and watching the people outside. Its a mess. Nobody is tidying up anything anymore. There's a burnt our car down the road and no firemen even tried to put it out, it just went out itself eventually. Where have the police gone ? I dont hear any sirens anymore. Havnt all day. I think maybe they are staying home with their families like what my mum is doing with me. We have a little battery run radio that we are listening too. The news is saying that there are power cuts all over the country. Well duh ! i can see that."<p>

**24 May**  
>"Something is going on outside. All the neighbours are getting in their cars and driving away. People are running around mad. Mum looks unsure about what to do. She's never like that. She's been crying i think. I'm listening to the radio now. Oh my god. The infected are in Glasgow ! They've got into Scotland ! Mum said they wouldnt come here. I want my dad. My dad and his machinegun will keep us safe . He's a sergeant, thats pretty high up i think. One day ill be in the army like him i hope. Ill be the next Sergeant Farrell."<p>

**25 May **  
>"The radio was saying something about fighting in Edinburgh this morning before it cut off. Now its just static. Maybe its broken ? or Maybe the people on the radio are dead. I dont know. Too many people are dead now. I hope my dad isnt one of them.<p>

OMG you wont believe what i just seen. Somebody blew up the Forth Road Bridge and the Rail Bridge ! Big explosions ! They must be trying to keep the infected from crossing over the river from Edinburgh.

Ill be back soon diary i want to have a better look from the window.

This can't be good. Bombing the bridges mustn't have worked because i can hear screaming from Dunfermline town centre. They must be getting closer now. Im scared. Mum is crying. She keeps hugging me telling me she loves me. I think she has a bad headache because she is getting loads of pills from the medicine cupboard. Ill be back soon, mums calling me over to the bedroom.''


	21. Life and Death in Manchester

So much has been written of the catastrophe that enveloped Great Britain. Much of it has been focused on the evacuation of the capital or the heroic actions of the armed forces, yet nowhere near has enough attention been paid to the city of Manchester, a city that had been inhabited since the first century and known the world over. Manchester United Football Club was known on all corners of the world and arguably one of the best football teams to ever play. Manchester was the location of the first death of the English Civil War and it was also the location of even worse bloodletting four centuries later as the Rage Epidemic swept the city.

Manchester was not like London. London managed to evacuate in a (mostly) calm manner. Manchester didn't have that luxury. In the first days of the outbreak, people continued with their daily lives as violence shattered the towns and cities to the south. As the virus spread, so did the panic. Refugees from London, Birmingham and Cambridge soon were flooding into the city by the thousands leading to the city's public services becoming overwhelmed. Manchester United's world famous Old Trafford Stadium was converted into a refugee centre run by the British Red Cross and became home to ten thousand displaced people from the south.

Riots soon broke out as resources became scarce and the few shops still open were ordered to ration items. As the virus spread even further north and the economy fell into free fall, looting broke out city wide to such a degree that Greater Manchester Police struggled to cope. With Tony Blair's declaration of a national emergency and the implementation of martial law, armed soldiers took to the streets and armoured cars patrolled the city centre. Looters were arrested, and several shot in public and made an example of. It was draconian, but it was also effective. For a while it worked and the streets were calm and clear. But that wouldn't last. The infected spread faster than anybody could have anticipated, and soon many of the main entry points to Manchester were closed. Liverpool, Sheffield, Stoke on Trent and Derby were overrun, the result of which was that people could not evacuate from Manchester south or west wards. The only way to go was north towards Scotland or east towards the coast.

With the collapse of the economy, the armed forces and police took over shops and supermarkets and began distributing rationed food. Lines over a mile long would form as people waited their turn to collect a loaf of bread, soup, box of cereal, carton of milk and packet of sausages amongst other things . Dozens were killed in food riots as food became more and scarcer as deliveries from the south evaporated. The RAF was dropping food parcels in via parachute, but it was nowhere near enough. As Manchester effectively became a city under siege, law and order began to crumble. Hundreds of police officers had discarded their uniforms and gone into hiding with their families, as had many soldiers.

Starvation and malnutrition began to set in eventually as the shelves in the shops were cleared and the last of the food in people's homes was finally consumed. The RAF airdrops eventually stopped too. Manchester began to starve to death. The city's power finally gave up on the 16 May, with gas, and subsequently central heating failing the next day. Black bin bags lined the streets and rats scoured the city spreading all sorts. Disease became prevalent amongst even the healthiest people as sanitation broke down. People were huddled in their homes, lit only by candles at night, listening to the ever worsening situation on their battery powered radio's and eating what little they could find. Many people had begun to eat their dogs or cats, some were eating insects, and, although to this day still unsubstantiated, many survivors claim that cannibalism had set in. The Siege of Manchester has often been compared to the Middle Ages, although in reality this was far, far worse. Many who escaped the city have mentioned that people were "skin and bone" and looked like a survivor from a Nazi death camp. This was no exaggeration either. An estimated 3,000 deaths occurred in Manchester due to starvation or starvation related illnesses, even before the first infected entered the city.

There were attempts to relieve the siege and open an evacuation corridor into Scotland, which worked for a couple of days. Long enough to get a few thousand people out. Thousands more remained trapped, barricaded in homes without electricity or flushing toilets and little to no food. Many families committed suicide, especially as the remaining army blockades were overrun one by one and the infected entered the city outskirts.

By 18 May, the infected had broken through the 38th, 39th, 40th, 41st and 43rd blockades around Manchester, with only the 42nd Blockade still holding out. The remaining soldiers fought a valiant battle as they retreated into the city centre. The Royal Air Force flew bombing runs against the infected horde for hours on end as artillery shelled anything that moved. The barrage of explosions and collapse of the Fire Brigade lead to the infamous Great Fire of Manchester, which destroyed around 80% of buildings in the city and no doubt killed thousands of trapped survivors.

One email sent from the city by an AP journalist just hours before the power failed read the following :

"Imagine this scene. : Rows of people lined up outside a church to collect their meagre, daily rations. Forty feet away a massive ditch is being dug by a mechanic digger as rotting , fly ridden corpses are thrown in by armed soldiers in protective gear. Dump trucks tip dozens of bodies at a time into the massive ditch. Another hundred feet away skinny, verging on malnourished, children play football having grown used to the smell of death. There is no electricity. There is no running water. There is no rubbish collection or sanitation of any kind. All there is , is the constant threat of death day in, day out.

This is not Auschwitz in 1944.

This is Manchester, England in 2002."

The fall of Manchester is still regarded by many as the day that we lost the "war" against the infected. This was the point when even the massed use of infantry, tanks, artillery, helicopters and fighter jets could not hold back the tide of infected. The last broadcast from Manchester showed footage of Old Trafford Stadium alight and the very much audible screams coming from inside...the screams of ten thousand very much normal, uninfected human beings burning to death.

After Manchester, all hope was lost. So it comes as no surprise that the next day, Tony Blair called for a nationwide evacuation in an effort to save as many lives as possible.

It was the beginning of the end. The End of Britain. The Death of a Nation.


	22. Threads

**Apologies for the late update. Thanks for following guys. With the main timeline completed, updates from now on will largely focus on various events that occured during the initial outbreak and how the government and society attempted to respond.**

Everything is connected to everything else. Modern society in a way works like a food chain. You take one thing out of that food chain and suddenly everything falls apart.

People didn't understand that at first. They were used to being able to fill their tank up with petrol whenever they wanted, they were used to being able to go into their local shop and buy as much food, drink, toiletries and whatnot as their wallets allowed.

But what happens when the delivery drivers are no longer delivering, or the power goes down, or the ports are closed ? With the fuel already being rationed and largely restricted to police and military use it became increasingly difficult to fill up lorries so they could deliver goods to shops. And even when fuel could be scraped together to fill up those lorries you couldn't guarantee there would be drivers available. After all, who wants to drive trucks food of goods around when the country has gone to hell in a hand basket due to the outbreak and the subsequent banditry that took over in some areas with an absence of law and order? Eventually the army largely took over responsibility for food deliveries but that was not the end of the problems.

With petrol rationed, it wasn't only delivery trucks that were affected, many people couldn't drive to work. And when the people who run the power plants, the sewage disposal systems, the people who work in hospitals and everything in between, well, when they all suddenly find themselves unable to travel to work, things begin to break down piece by piece. Of course many people were "encouraged" by the army under the martial law declaration to sleep at their workplaces in an effort to get around these issues. But soon enough peoples minds began to drift to their families. In a country suddenly finding itself on the cusp of a localised apocalypse so to speak, your average person from cleaners and policemen to doctors and government ministers suddenly found themselves caught between their duty and families. Absenteeism across both public and private sectors skyrocketed, even in areas still unaffected by the epidemic.

Despite the best efforts of the government and the army to encourage staff working in the military, the emergency services, the NHS and in vital infrastructure to continue working, it was not always possible to force them to work.

A sudden spike in absenteeism amongst local police forces led to a rise in crime in some areas, though in areas near the infection crime actually dropped as people sheltered in place, trying to wait it out. Shops, bars and restraunts all began to see a drop in both customers and employees turning up, even in areas still miles away from the outbreak. Eventually, the economy began to fall apart at the seams and the Pound was about as useful as toilet paper (later in the outbreak, there were documented cases of people burning money for warmth)

Rolling blackouts became commonplace in an effort to conserve power. Hospital patients who were not seriously ill were ejected to free up room for more serious illnesses and injuries and to relieve pressure on the collapsing health care system already buckling under the strain of the outbreak. Fire services and police forces had to call up volunteers and recently retired members to help make up for massive losses in manpower. Almost all major supermarkets that had not been totally gutted by looters were occupied by armed soldiers or police officers and turned into food distribution centres that were largely managed by Red Cross teams with support from the military.

Rations varied, but largely involved things like a few cans of soup, boiled rice, tinned ham and fruit. In areas where the water supply had stopped working the rations also included bottled water and water purification tablets. This inevitably led to violence as modern day Brits were not accustomed to such draconian measures. And despite the best efforts of some of the older generations, there was no "Dunkirk Spirit" amongst the British public in the dark days of the summer of 2002.

Piece by piece, the national infrastructure begun to collapse. The airports and seaports had been closed to civilian aircraft and shipping after the UN declared a quarantine for Great Britain. Almost all public transportation was suspended as busses and trains were commandeered by the armed forces to aid in evacuating the big cities to the south which left thousands of people stranded in some areas with no way of getting home. Many motorways that had not received official designation as "evacuation corridors" had been closed to all but official traffic in an effort to get troops and support personnel to locations they were needed fast as possible. With night time curfews in place, armed soldiers patrolling the streets and most non essential workplaces closed, the people of Britain , barring those in designated mandatory evacuation zones, choose to stay indoors and try to wait it out, only really going outside to stand in two hour long queues to collect their meagre daily rations.

But with the borders closed, no new supplies of fuel and food were coming in. The ration collection points set up at churches and community centres began to hand out less and less rations, whilst vehicles transporting essential goods began to struggle to get their fuel as the last of the national fuel reserves began to be used up. And when ration stations began to close, people panicked. They migrated to other towns and cities in search of food, despite official advice over the now government controlled airwaves to remain calm and stay at home. Riots broke out across the still uninfected parts of the UK as migrating refugees headed northwards in search of food and a new home. Residents of the already overcrowded northern cities, already struggling with low supplies themselves, fought against the tides of refugees coming from the south and some even set up make shift barricades on the roads armed with Molotov cocktails, cricket bats and the occasional farmers shotgun. Much blood was spilled before the over stretched army stepped in and forced the ad hoc militias to let the refugees pass and take residence in the Red Cross "tent cities" that had begun to spring up all over the country, largely located in parks and sports arenas.

But it wasn't just the public that had to deal with supply issues. The army, overstretched and undermanned, also was struggling with food and ammunition supplies for their troops. Logistics were in complete disarray, especially after London fell. This inevitably led to an increase in desertions within the armed forces, with the army the worst affected of the three branches. SAS teams were dispatched by the Ministry of Defence to hunt down and execute deserters to make an example of them, but it made little difference in the long run and very few were ever caught given the army did not have the resources to spare looking for AWOL troopers.

Following the catastrophic Battle of Manchester that left over 100,000 civilians and 7,000 soldiers dead, the morale of Britain's once mighty armed forces was shattered, and what remained of the army began a retreat northwards. Much of their heavy artillery and tanks were left behind in the rush to flee the carnage to the south. In the days that followed, the British army would experience wholesale collapse due to casualty rates, desertion, supply issues and the collapse of the chain of command. The army began to operate at a local level, generally led by junior officers operating on their inititive after contact was lost with senior generals. When the people who grow, make, package and deliver the food supplies for the military are suddenly no longer working, and the people who manufacture arms and ammunition are no longer working, a modern army cannot possibly be anything close to combat effective. The farmers who breed the cattle and grow the vegetables were dead or fled, the delivery drivers who take their stock to market or factories were dead or fled and the people who put said food in boxes or cans were dead or fled. Even if they were alive, there was almost no fuel for the tractors or delivery trucks and even the reserve fuel for the armed forces and emergency services was almost running out.

A modern nation is held together by threads. Threads that are connected to everything else, and once one thread is cut, soon the rest begin to falter. Thats what happened to Great Britain in the Summer of 2002.


End file.
